Rosa's Passage

Rosa’s Passage, 2014, ongoing

ul. Piotrkowska 3, Łódź, Poland

Rosa’s Passage combines both private and public narratives. It is the story of the disease and convalescence of the artist’s child, Rosa, diagnosed with eye cancer in 2012, contained within a story of the revitalization (recovery) of a 19th-century building, that started to “see”.

The 800m2 of wall in the Polski Hotel’s courtyard have been meticulously covered with a mosaic of tiny pieces of broken mirrors. The repeated rosette pattern mimics the arrangement of the cells of the human retina. The ultimate result is a mesmerising fragmentation of the space.

The de-materialization of a solid, a radical relativization of perception and a fascination with seeing per se became an architectural experience in the project – the architecture has been treated as a living organism covered with light-sensitive tissue. The key to understanding Rosa’s Passage is the identification of the human body with and through architectural matter.